


turning up the volume when you speak

by twistedingenue



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Disability, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 06:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2099184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedingenue/pseuds/twistedingenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody knows somebody who never got words. Darcy’s always been Everybody else’s somebody that they know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	turning up the volume when you speak

Everybody knows somebody who never got words. Darcy’s always been Everybody else’s somebody that they know. Everyone’s somebody is spoken of in just tones, about how sad it is that they don’t have a soulmate. No one that just gets them, romantically or not, because it’s not about romance it’s about sharing a connection that binds you so much together that free will just stops, and there’s a little piece of destiny imprinted on your body. Darcy, as a teenager, waited and hoped that someday her words would come. That the thread of possibility had landed and was driving forward to something inevitable.

At twenty five, Darcy’s watched as friends and lovers have found their mate, has seem the shocked faces when words matched up, or even rarer, when the words shifted and formed new ones. And hers never came. She’s gotten used to being an object lesson, an example for the masses, a statistic. It’s okay. It just means that this part of her life is unsettled and an adventure. Darcy tells herself that she gets to make her own friends, allies, and lovers not based on the potential of words.

Jane has beautiful golden script on her ankle where Thor had none until he landed on Earth and her fate became his fate. Selvig had faded and worn words on his forearm, ones Darcy couldn’t read, a reminder of a man that had been a friend and scientific partner. Ian wouldn’t show his to Darcy, but she catches a glimpse of words she’d never say to him.

Darcy has nothing, but her life has a lot more adventure to it now. She saves the world. Okay, she helps save the world. Jane saves the world with Thor and Darcy helped.

“What did you do to yourself?” Jane says, tugging at Darcy’s shirt, pulling it aside to expose her skin. Jane believes in manhandling everyone, “Did someone hit you?”

“What are you talking about?” Darcy jerks her body away from the invasion.

“You’ve got something on your shoulder, bruises,” Jane says, “Or just one really big one.”

“I must have bumped into something.” Darcy shrugs, she doesn’t feel like she hurts anywhere, can’t remember hitting her shoulder that hard, but she must have.

Except it doesn’t go away, it doesn’t get smaller or change color like a normal injury. Darcy’s hard-pressed to know what it means, but it’s a _bruise_ and while others have come and gone, and everything seems okay, so she mostly just tries to forget about it.

“Maybe it’s your soulmate?” Jane says one night, in a rushed whisper, excited at the idea.

“I think that would mean my soul mates first words are hitting me, and that does not seem endearing,” Darcy sniffs, “I don’t have words, Jane.” She shakes her head, “Let it go, okay?”

Thor eventually convinces Jane to do a stint in Stark Tower, accepting the offer of lab space, at least until the worst of SHIELD collapsing under the weight of HYDRA is over. Darcy meets loads of superheroes. Like, almost all of them.

She recognizes Hawkeye, because there are photos of him all around the tower, because he seems to photo bomb on expert mode, and she’s met Natasha. She’s not expecting them to be furiously signing at each other, their hands moving as fast a blur, and Darcy ends up staring. It looks so different from her clumsy attempt to learn how to finger spell in third grade on a whim that passed almost as quick as it started.

Hawkeye notices her staring, and tilts at the hips and moves his hands right at her, anger carrying out through the momentum that starts in his fingers, and goes through his arms and the rest of his body. Natasha translates as, ”What the hell you staring at?” she rolls her eyes, “Really Barton, don’t scare the girl, you can talk.”

“Holy shit, how do your fingers move so fast?” Darcy asks in shock.

Hawkeye freezes, his hands stilling before the rest of him and Natasha looks like she just ate a canary, “I told you I wouldn’t be the only person who would ever say that.”

“Where is it?” Hawkeye says frantically, walking towards her with intention. She’s just not sure what that intention is, “Where do you have it?”

“Have what?” Darcy says, darting her head around, trying to look for whatever he’s looking for. Barton steadies her head with his fingers, so that she’s looking at him.

“Your words, where are they?” He asks and keeps her head facing towards him, even when she tries to back away.

“I don’t have words,” she over exaggerates her lips, “I never have and dude, out of my personal space!”

“You have to have words, you said mine,” Barton looks at her like a starving child, “Mine appears a couple of years ago. Where are yours?”

Hawkeye is nearly shouting now, and Darcy doesn’t know if that’s just a thing he does, but Jane is holding onto the door frame of one of the other rooms, “Look at her shoulder,” Jane shares a look with Darcy.

“This isn’t funny Jane,” Darcy crosses her arms, “Who put you up to this? It’s not funny,” and it’s not, and there are tears forming at the corner of her eyes in frustration and anger, betrayal. She doesn’t have words, she’s everyone’s somebody and she hasn’t been treated like this since she was a kid and it hurts worse than it ever did then. “Fine, whatever, I’ll prove it.” She unbuttons her shirt and throws it across the room at Jane.

“Huh,” Natasha makes the noise turn into a chuckle, “Clint, it kind of looks like how you sign when you are angry.”

Darcy can feel the color drain from her face and flush in her chest. She’s standing without her shirt on, and she’s not even wearing a pretty bra today, “It’s just a bruise that won’t heal,” she mutters.

“It’s not,” Darcy assumes that Natasha is translating, since Barton can’t see her talk, and he traces his finger across the mark, “It’s what I said, but not in words, it’s how it moves.” Barton twists around her, and pulls up his own shirt, nudges down his pants just a bit, to expose the dream-like script that words seem to take. And there they are, _holy shit how do your fingers move so fast?_ , written across his hip.

“But I —“ Darcy objects, but how can she, that makes sense in some way, “They aren’t —“ and she’s swallowed into a crushing hug and she’s not sure how to take that.

“I always thought that I was nobody’s until these appeared.” Barton says, “Thank you for existing, if nothing else.”

Darcy sinks into his arms, and doesn’t say a thing, just puts her arms around him. Because yeah, she understands that sentiment. She’s somebody’s somebody instead of everyone’s. And she thinks, that if she has Hawkeye for a soulmate, her life is always going to be an adventure.

**Author's Note:**

> Anon prompted me with "I know the soulmate trope with the "first words are marked on their skin" addition is getting really popular in the MCU fandom but like beyond amusewithaview's addressing asgardian marks there's no variation and I'd just really like to see how blind and/or deaf people go about within those AUs and not just have one type of deafness/blindness for everyone affected.
> 
> This is just one way of thinking about how disability might work in a AU verse like this. It is just one idea, and one concept I worked with while I was sick, and I encourage others to think about disability in this trope. 
> 
> You can follow me at [ my tumblr; ](http://twistedingenue.tumblr.com) drop a line anytime!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [turning up the volume when you speak [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3961420) by [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass)




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